By Jim Brown
A longtime leader in the pro-family movement says Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has never been validated as a disease.
Estimates place the number of children diagnosed with ADHD at between 5 and 7 million. But Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly says doctors and pharmaceutical companies are turning behavioral problems into a disorder.
“If you look at the list of symptoms on which people diagnose ADHD, you will find that they are characteristics of most normal boys — unable to sit still, has difficulty following directions, wants to run around and may fidget if required to sit too long; that sort of thing. This is just normal 'boy behavior,'” she says.
Schlafly believes some of those behavioral issues are the result of a failure on the part of parents to exercise adequate discipline in the home. And she is convinced there are more effective ways for schools to deal with young students who refuse to be quiet, sit down, or do what they are told in the school classroom.
“I think there are all kinds of other ways [the schools] should deal with it,” she says. “They should have supervised playground activities so the children can run off their energy.
“They also should look into the diet — I think a lot of the [food items] served in the school lunch and in the machines that are allowed to be in schools are very stimulating in a way that you don't want to artificially stimulate a young child.”
Schlafly says the psychotropic drugs prescribed for children diagnosed with ADHD have had sophisticated marketing and been successful in getting both teachers and parents to believe there is something wrong with their normal child. That is why she believes there is still a long road to climb before most Americans realize ADHD is a behavioral problem — and not a medical problem.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
